Design Services

This is not a bill. This is an explanation of experiences.

Explanations should not require explanations.

If you have health insurance, you’ve most likely seen an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) before. They’re sent when you or anyone on your insurance plan visits the doctor or dentist. But even though we’ve all seen an EOB, not many people understand their purpose. Therein lies the problem for Priority Health. Even though they are required by law to send an EOB to every patient for every service, in doing so they accomplish little more than confuse people.

No matter how the document looked, everyone who received it found themselves asking, “Do I have to pay? Is this for me or my spouse? My child? What do I do next?”

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to redesign their EOB internally, Priority Health turned to Visualhero. Our objective was to determine why these explanations needed further explanation, allowing us to eliminate confusion and create an understandable and useful document.

Redefining the experience

The core of the project was to redesign the experience a user has when receiving an EOB. This would not only require a physical redesign of the document itself, but more importantly a redefinition of its purpose, strategy and vision. What the EOB does is the most important aspect of the project, while the visual design of the document would be defined by extensive, user-point-of-view research.

One-on-one interviews, focus groups and surveys overwhelmingly confirmed what we already knew: nobody knows what an EOB is, let alone what should be done with it.

We began our research at the source by talking with real users to objectively gain insights. Armed with these genuine insights, we recognized a number of areas of improvement and began to craft an EOB experience based on desirability, feasibility and viability. These opportunities, and the ways to address them, were identified through extensive research. Ask anyone who worked on this project why a certain piece of information is in a certain spot on the EOB, and we can quickly and substantially answer your question and back it up with cold, hard facts.

A successful launch

Visualhero’s work informed a vision that prompted a redesign of a more meaningful EOB experience. When we began testing with users, we received tremendous response. It offered them the clarity that was missing in its previous form.

After receiving the updated EOB, people understood whom the bill is for, what it’s for and what to do next.

For confidentiality reasons, we can’t show you a full EOB. However, if you’d like to experience it for yourself, simply enroll with Priority Health, visit the doctor and then sit by the mailbox. Your EOB will arrive within a few weeks.

“We brought the problem and they brought the tools to solve it. ‘Innovation’ is a buzzword, but that is what happened with Visualhero’s approach.”